Rants and raves about the mess of higher education in the United States.

Sunday, May 27, 2018

Illinois University: Cut Faculty Pay To Zero

By Professor Doom

It’s so hard to
keep up with the collapse of higher education. One of the big problems is
administration; our universities are so overloaded with overpaid admin that
they no longer can afford to have full time faculty. So far, they’ve addressed
this issue with providing minimal pay and harsh working conditions to “adjunct”
faculty, who receive so little they qualify for welfare.

“Zero-time” is
admin-speak for volunteer. So, instead of adjuncts getting sub-minimum wage and
no benefits, this school wants to get adjuncts to work for, quite literally,
nothing.

I feel the need to
highlight the functionary here. His name is Michael Molino, and his title is
(big inhale): Southern Illinois University Associate
Dean for Budget, Personnel, and Research. Seriously, the length of the title is a hint
there’s a problem here: we have so many deanlings on our campus that they can
only distinguish themselves from one another by lengthy titles. If we ever do
decide to restore sanity on our campuses, the first rule will be to eliminate
any position whose title is twice as long as the name as the title holder. It’s
disturbing how the majority of administrators I quote in this blog could not
keep their jobs based on this rule. Do note: this guy is just the “associate”
Dean…presumably there’s at least one Dean above him (and likely an Assistant
Dean of Yaddayaddayadda below him as well).

Now, maybe these “volunteer” adjuncts are
just getting called adjuncts, and aren’t actual academics?

“…they will generally hold an
academic doctorate or other terminal degree as appropriate for the field.”

I’ve mentioned the Ph.D. glut a few times, but
this is ridiculous. Do we really have so many jobless Ph.D.s floating around
that they’d honestly do volunteer work? Perhaps they won’t actually do the job
of faculty? Let’s see what is being asked of these volunteers:

…service on graduate student thesis committees,
teaching specific graduate or undergraduate lectures in one’s area of expertise,
service on departmental or university committees, and collaborations on grant
proposals and research projects...

Um…that’s a faculty member’s job. It used
to be, the entire purpose of a university was teaching and research. Today’s
universities exist only to support the administrative class, and thus it is
that now they’re seriously considering volunteers to do the “extraneous” things
like teach or perform research.

I can’t make this stuff up.

Could this get more insulting? Absolutely!
Not only are they looking for volunteers to do what used to be the primary
mission of higher education, these volunteers will have administration watching
over them:

…appointments are for 3-year periods, and can
be renewed.

Wow, how hard up do you need to be to
consider, after spending a decade or more getting a Ph.D., working for
absolutely nothing for 3 years, and after that, you’ll have to beg if you want
to keep the “job”?

I…can’t make this stuff up. This really
is how insane administration is today, that they honestly think they’re going
to get volunteers with the utmost of credentials, and they’ll have so many that
they believe they can possibly “thin the herd” every 3 years. I admit, I live
in a bit of a bubble in my ivory tower…is there any organization or field out
there with so many top tier candidates they honestly have a problem with too
many volunteers willing to work full time for free for three years or more?

The school is being rightfully roasted
over this, and has an official response:

"This is a proposed pilot
project developed in collaboration with the SIU Alumni Association to connect
qualified alumni with our students as mentors to enhance – not replace – the
work of our faculty…

Yeah, right, and if you buy that I’ve a
wide selection of bridges I can sell you. The statement above, incidentally,
comes from the (big inhale): Interim Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Meera Komarraju. Seriously, the
titles alone really do tell the tale of what’s going on in higher ed today.

If this school manages to acquire
volunteer faculty, it will be pretty much over for higher ed. How can anyone possibly think education is a key to a
better life when the most educated people in our country will literally be
begging to be unpaid volunteers?

This e-mail/atrocity is making the rounds,
and some of the comments highlight the larger issues here:

I think we need a zero time volunteer
chancellor

It’s funny how getting rid of the excess
administration is never on the table, no matter how severe the financial
troubles the school claims to have. In times past, many administrative
positions were volunteer positions.
This may sound strange, but the Dean really only needs to do “Dean things” for
a few hours a week, and then only when classes were in session. Because of
this, a faculty member would take over as Dean; he might get a little extra
money, he might get to teach one fewer class that semester…or he might just get
kudos for his volunteer service to the institution. Because the pay, if any,
was so minimal, most faculty didn’t serve as Dean for years on end, just a year
or two before going back.

Inside Higher Education also covered
this, and another issue was brought up in the comments section:

“…these appointments will probably be used to boost SIU’s
placement rates.”

The Federal government, as well as the
general population, is slowly figuring out this Ph.D. mill business,
responsible for the glut of Ph.D.’s. So schools are now reporting “placement,”
in other words reporting how many of their graduates are actually getting jobs.
The e-mail is targeting alumni of the school, and you better believe that the
school will say these alumni “are in academia” when it comes to reporting how
successful their graduates are. That the alumni will be “working” not simply a
low paid adjunct position, but as a full on volunteer “we don’t care if you
starve to death with that education we sold to you for hundreds of thousands of
dollars” position will be left out of any reporting.

There’s a part of me that really respects
the brutal ruthlessness of admin here, as getting these volunteers would
simultaneously free up more money to flow into administrative pockets and
increase those “placement rates.” Brilliant.

While our schools are reduced now to
seeking out volunteers to do the teaching and research, our total student loan
debt in this country is around $1.5 trillion dollars. It’s clear that quite
soon literally none of the future student loan money will be going towards education,
so can we just end the student loan scam now?